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A personal rant. Hear me out…I promise it’s not petty

Now, purely on a systemic level, there are many reasons to inherently be less than trusting of white people (and anyone who’s familiar with my writings so far is probably well-aware of that already). But that’s not what this piece is about. This is more on an individual, interpersonal level…and perhaps how that level relates to the systemic level.

So, I once had this friend who I felt very close with — we chartered and helped build a leather club together, traveled together, regularly had intimate conversations…he was even the first person I reached out to and confided in when I was diagnosed with HIV. Frankly, he could be a bit of an ass and would spread drama and bullshit wherever he went, but I always stuck up for him because I knew him through the bullshit, and felt like he would do the same for me. By just about any measure that matters, I considered him family, and I honestly thought the world of him.

…but that all changed as my social views continued to evolve. [Read more…]

…that awkward moment when you realize you’re happily unemployed

FYI: This one is a bit more personal than the pieces I’ve written so far. It originally started as a simple Facebook post about my own situation, but it seemed to have resonated with a few people and what they’re going through, so here we are.

So, just one week and one day ago [from the time this piece was originally written], at around 5:30 pm CST, I was semi-enjoying a couple of bittersweet glasses of Cabernet in my job’s employee lounge, before I took a couple of old Walgreen’s bags full of all my belongings from work, and walked out of the office for the last time. A couple of hours before that, I was having a short meeting with said employer’s Director of HR, awkwardly going over some pertinent paperwork. And couple of hours before that, I sat down with my manager (who kept a noticeably somber look on his face from the second we entered the meeting room) for our weekly one-on-one meeting, where the first words out of his mouth were “We’re gonna have to let you go.” He then went on the list out all of the performance-related issues that led to my termination. As I was pretty much fully aware of the reasons (we’d discussed my performance-related issues in the weeks prior), I was looking at him from across the table, but I was hardly listening. But over the course of his talking, I felt a wave of panic…which was quickly coated over by enough relief to fill Lake Michigan.